July 31, 2009: OpenFiler, Euro Flights

I’m not exactly sure how I managed to pull it off but even after having been out of town for a week and having several days during which I had no way to post or write anything whatsoever SGL is actually completely back up to date!  Go me.

For some reason, even after getting actual sleep last night, I was completely exhausted today.  Really, really exhausted.  I guess that things just really caught up with me after a very long, hard week.

It is really warm in the lower Hudson Valley today.  Hot and sticky.  And a few times during the day we were suddenly hit with massive rainstorms.  They never lasted more than a few minutes leaving us with one hundred percent humidity and no cooling effect to show for it.

The air conditioning at our house appears to be having a really hard time keeping up with the cooling needs in the house.  It is sometimes struggling just to keep the house around seventy degrees.  With it being so humid it is even worse feeling in the house.  It was so humid today that I decided to hook up the dehumidifier that we have in the basement to see if that would improve things at all.

I managed to get OpenFiler working today.  At least it is working when connecting to it from Vista.  Windows 7 is still having an issue.  I am not sure if it is an account issue or if it is something bigger like and Windows 7 communications issue.  More experimentation will be needed there.

Since Vista is able to connect just fine to the new filer it gave me an opportunity to begin moving all of the data from the old Netgear SC101 SAN system over onto the OpenFiler system.  We have a ton of data to get moved and the sooner the better so my next project is now underway.  We have around 700GB of data to move from the SAN device over to OpenFiler before we can start working the Vista box!

I got my flights booked for my European vacation today.  It turned out to be quite inexpensive too – even doing it at this late of a date.  Just six weeks until I head off to Amsterdam and the round trip flights worked out to be just $535 after all taxes!  I cannot believe that it can be so cost effective to fly to Europe.

I am flying out of JFK on Tuesday, September 8th in the evening after work.  I have enough time to work a full day before leaving.  Hopefully that means that I will be tired and will be able to nap on the flight.  I fly to Dublin where I have a few hours of layover before catching a puddle jumper over to Amsterdam.  I arrive in Amsterdam at two in the afternoon.  It is roughly twelve hours of travel time to go from New York to Amsterdam with my short layover.  It will be a long trip.

I am be returning from Amsterdam on Monday, September 14th at one in the afternoon and will arrive back in New York on the same afternoon at seven.  It is amazing how much the time difference affects you on a flight this long and this directional.

I do not plan to be spending any real time in Amsterdam.  I am really just using it as a launching point for getting in to Osnabruck where I will be spending the week.  Since I look like I am going to be traveling alone my plan is to just take the train rather than dealing with the cost and mental overhead of renting a car and then finding my way about in countries with signs in languages that I do not speak very well.  I can read must signs in Dutch and German without a problem in a pinch but would prefer to avoid it when driving alone for my first time on the continent.

We called down to the Maple Avenue Deli this evening to check about their pizza again and again their oven is off because of the heat.  Their lit pizza sign is still on in the window, of course.  So we skipped eating there and called out to Forno’s for eggplant parm wedges and fried calamari instead.  That was even easier since it is delivered.  We definitely did not want to do anything extra with me working all evening.  I have a lot of work scheduled for tomorrow as well and Sunday is not going to be the lightest day either.  Just one busy weekend.  It is good as this should mean, in theory, that I will not be working as much next weekend when dad is here.

Today was a crazy day at work.  The system updates that we did tonight took my entire evening away.  It was expected and I’m not complaining about the hours.  It was long, though.  I ended up working until around one thirty in the morning!  Exhausting.  Good progress on the system upgrades and this will definitely be making my workload a lot easier going forward.

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